People who like rocks see cool rocks everywhere. People who like birds see interesting birds everywhere. The tree on your yard could be an exceptional specimen. The world around you could be amazing and magical, but you aren’t enough of a nerd to see it.

I gave my mum Alexandra Horowitz’s On Looking: Eleven Walks Through Expert Eyes for her birthday this year, it’s a book that revolves around this idea: the author invites 11 specialists in different things to walk around a boring city block with her one after the other so they can point out to her the things they see, that she doesn’t notice. There’s an expert in typography talking about what the variety of fonts on urban signs can tell you about the city’s history, an entomologist pointing out all the urban insects no one pays attention to, a geologist, a sound engineer…